face of the range, where there was water. While they were away some ducks visited the camp, but the tea-tree was too thick to allow us to shoot any of them. The day was cool, although there is a great oppression in the atmosphere, and it is impossible to tell by one’s feelings what might be the range of the thermometer, as I have often felt it hotter on some days with the thermometer at 96 or 98 degrees than when it ranged up to 108 or 110 degrees. The afternoons are excessively relaxing, for although the mercury falls a little after three o’clock, still the morning’s heat appears to remain until the sun has actually set. It is more than probable that the horses having been hunted by the natives, and having found more water, will not come back here of their own accord to water any more; so I shall keep one tied up at the camp, to fetch the others up with every morning.
And now comes Thursday, 25th December, Christmas Day, 1873. Ah, how the time flies! Years following years, steal something every day; at last they steal us from ourselves away. What Horace says is, Eheu fugaces, anni labuntur postume, postume:–Years glide away, and are lost to me, lost to me.
While Jimmy Andrews was away after the others, upon the horse that was tied up all night, we were startled out of our propriety by the howls and yells of a pack of fiends in human form and aboriginal appearance, who had clambered up the rocks just above our camp. I could only see some ten or a dozen in the front, but scores more were dodging in and out among the rocks. The more prominent throng were led by an ancient individual, who, having fitted a spear, was just in the act of throwing it down amongst us, when Gibson seized a rifle, and presented him with a conical Christmas box, which smote the rocks with such force, and in such near proximity to his hinder parts, that in a great measure it checked his fiery ardour, and induced most of his more timorous following to climb with most perturbed activity over the rocks. The ancient more slowly followed, and then from behind the fastness of his rocky shield, he spoke spears and boomerangs to us, though he used none. He, however, poured out the vials of his wrath upon us, as he probably thought to some purpose. I was not linguist enough to be able to translate all he said; but I am sure my free interpretation of the gist of his remarks is correct, for he undoubtedly stigmatised us as a vile and useless set of lazy, crawling, white-faced wretches, who came sitting on hideous brutes of hippogryphs, being too lazy to walk like black men, and took upon ourselves the right to occupy any country or waters we might chance to find; that we killed and ate any wallabies and other game we happened to see, thereby depriving him and his friends of their natural, lawful food, and that our conduct had so incensed himself and his noble friends, who were now in the shelter of the rocks near him, that he begged us to take warning that it was the unanimous determination of himself and his noble friends to destroy such vermin as he considered us, and our horses to be, and drive us from the face of the earth.
It appeared to me, however, that his harangue required punctuation, so I showed him the rifle again, whereupon he incontinently indulged in a full stop. The natives then retired from those rocks, and commenced their attack by throwing spears through the tea-tree from the opposite side of the creek. Here we had the back of our gunyah for a shield, and could poke the muzzles of our guns and rifles through the interstices of the boughs. We were compelled to discharge our pieces at them to ensure our peace and safety.
Our last discharge drove away the enemy, and soon after, Jimmy came with all the horses. Gibson shot a wallaby, and we had fried chops for our Christmas dinner. We drew from the medical department a bottle of rum to celebrate Christmas and victory. We had an excellent dinner (for explorers), although we had eaten our Christmas pudding two days before. We perhaps had no occasion to envy any one their Christmas dinner, although perhaps we did. Thermometer 106 degrees in the shade. On this occasion Mr. Tietkens, who was almost a professional, sang us some songs in a fine, deep, clear voice, and Gibson sang two or three love songs, not altogether badly; then it was Jimmy’s turn. He said he didn’t know no love songs, but he would give us Tommy or Paddy Brennan. This gentleman appears to have started in business as a highwayman in the romantic mountains of Limerick. One verse that Jimmy gave, and which pleased us most, because we couldn’t quite understand it, was
“It was in sweet Limerick (er) citty That he left his mother dear;
And in the Limerick (er) mountains, He commenced his wild caroo-oo.”
Upon our inquiring what a caroo was, Jimmy said he didn’t know. No doubt it was something very desperate, and we considered we were perhaps upon a bit of a wild caroo ourselves.
The flies had now become a most terrible plague, especially to the horses, but most of all to the unfortunate that happens to be tied up. One horse, when he found he could not break away, threw himself down so often and so violently, and hurt himself so much, that I was compelled to let him go, unless I had allowed him to kill himself, which he would certainly have done.
A small grape-like fruit on a light green bush of the sandal-wood kind, having one soft stone, was got here. This fruit is black when ripe, and very good eating raw. We tried them cooked with sugar as jam, and though the others liked them very much, I could not touch them. The afternoons were most oppressive, and we had our usual earthquakes; one on the 28th causing a more than usual falling of rocks and smashing of tea-trees.
For a few days I was taking a rest. I was grieved to find that the water gradually ceased running earlier than formerly–that is to say, between eleven and twelve–the usual time had been between two and three p.m.; but by the morning every little basin was refilled. The phases of the moon have evidently something to do with the water supply. As the moon waxes, the power of the current wanes, and vice versa. On the 1st January, 1874, the moon was approaching its full, a quarter’s change of the moon being the only time rain is likely to fall in this country; rain is threatening now every day. After a hot and sultry night, on the 2nd, at about two o’clock, a fine thunder-shower from the east came over the range, and though it did not last very long, it quite replenished the water supply in the creek, and set it running again after it had left off work for the day. This shower has quite reanimated my hopes, and Mr. Tietkens and I at once got three horses, and started off to reach the distant range, hoping now to find some water which would enable us to reach it. For ten miles from the camp the shower had extended; but beyond that distance no signs of it were visible anywhere. On the 4th we found a clay-pan, having a clay-hole at one end with some mud in it, and which the natives had but just left, but no water; then another, where, as thunderstorms were flying about in all directions, we dug out a clay tank. While at work our clothes were damped with a sprinkling, but not enough rain fell to leave any on the ground. It seemed evident I must pack out water from Fort Mueller, if ever I reached the new feature, as Nature evidently did not intend to assist, though it seemed monstrous to have to do so, while the sky was so densely overcast and black, and threatening thunderstorms coming up from all directions, and carrying away, right over our heads, thousands of cubic acres of water which must fall somewhere. I determined to wait a few days and see the upshot of all these threatenings. To the east it was undoubtedly raining, though to the west the sky was beautifully clear. We returned to the native clay-pan, hoping rain might have fallen, but it was drier than when we left it. The next morning the clear sky showed that all the rains had departed. We deepened the native clay-hole, and then left for the depot, and found some water in a little hole about ten miles from it. We rested the horses while we dug a tank, and drained all the water into it; not having a pickaxe, we could not get down deep enough.
From here I intended to pack some water out north. While we were digging, another thunderstorm came up, sprinkling us with a few drops to show its contempt; it then split in halves, going respectively north and south, apparently each dropping rain on the country they passed over.
On reaching the camp, we were told that two nice showers had fallen, the stream now showing no signs of languishing all the day long. With his usual intelligence, Jimmy Andrews had pulled a double-barrelled gun out from under a heap of packbags and other things by the barrel; of course, the hammer got caught and snapped down on the cartridge, firing the contents, but most fortunately missing his body by half an inch. Had it been otherwise, we should have found him buried, and Gibson a lunatic and alone. No natives had appeared while we were away; as I remembered what the old gentleman told me about keeping away, so I hoped he would do the same, on account of my parting remarks to him, which it seems he must have understood.
In the middle of the night my little dog Cocky rushed furiously out of the tent, and began to bark at, and chase some animal round the camp; he eventually drove it right into the tent. In the obscured moonlight I supposed it was a native dog, but it was white, and looked exactly like a large fat lamb. It was, at all events, an innocent lamb to come near us, for as it sauntered away, I sent a revolver bullet after it, and it departed at much greater speed, squealing and howling until out of earshot.
On the 7th Mr. Tietkens and I again departed for the north. That night we got wet through; there was plenty of water, but none that would remain. Being sure that the native clay-hole would now be full, we passed it on our left, and at our outmost tank at nineteen miles were delighted to find that both it and the clay-pan near it were full. We called this the Emu Tank. We now went to the bare red hill with pines, previously mentioned, and found a trickling flow of water in a small gully. I hope it will trickle till I return. We are now fifty miles from Fort Mueller, and the distant ranges seemed even farther away than that.
Moving north, we went over a mass of open-rolling sandhills with triodia, and that other abominable plant I call the sage-bush. In appearance it is something like low tea-tree, but it differs entirely from that family, inasmuch as it utterly abhors water. Although it is not spiny like the triodia, it is almost as annoying, both to horse and man, as it grows too high for either to step over without stretching, and it is too strong to be easily moved aside; hence, horse-tracks in this region go zigzag.
At thirty-five miles the open sandhills ceased, and scrubs came on. It was a cool and cloudy day. We passed through a few groves of the pretty desert oak-trees, which I have not seen for some time; a few native poplars and currajongs were also seen to-day. The horses wandered a long way back in the night.
After travelling fifteen miles, we were now rapidly approaching the range, and we debouched upon a eucalyptus flat, which was covered with a beautiful carpet of verdure, and not having met with gumtrees for some time, those we saw here, looked exceedingly fine, and the bark dazzling white. Here we found a clay crab-hole. These holes are so-called in parts of Australia, usually near the coasts, where freshwater crabs and crayfish bury themselves in the bottoms of places where rain water often lodges; the holes these creatures make are tubes of two, three, or four feet deep, whose sides and bottom are cemented, and which hold water like a glass bottle; in these tubes they remain till rain again lodges above, when for a time they are released. The crab-hole we found contained a little water, which our horses drank with great avidity. The range was now only six or seven miles off, and it stood up bold and abrupt, having steep and deep gorges here and there, in its southern front. It was timberless and whitish-looking, and I had no doubt of finding water at it. I was extremely annoyed to discover that my field glasses, an excellent pair, had been ripped off my saddle in the scrubs, and I should now be disappointed in obtaining any distant view from the summit.
“They were lost to the view like the sweet morning’s dew; They had been, and were not, was all that I knew.”
From the crab-hole, in seven miles we reached a gorge in the mountain side, travelling through scrub, over quartz, pebbly hills, and occasional gum flats, all trending west, probably forming a creek in that direction.
In the gorge facing us we could discover a glittering little thread of water pouring down in a cascade from the top of the mountain into the gorge below, and upon reaching it we found, to our great delight, that we were upon the stony bank of a beautiful and pellucid little stream, whose almost invisibly bright water was so clear that not till our horses splashed it up with their feet could we quite realise this treasure trove. It was but a poor place for the horses to graze, on account of the glen being so stony and confined, but there was no occasion for them to ramble far to get plenty of grass, or a shady place either. We had some dinner and a most agreeable rest,–
“‘Neath the gum-trees’ shade reclining, Where the dark green foliage twining,
Screened us from the fervid shining Of the noontide sun.”
This spot was distant about ninety miles from Fort Mueller, in a straight line. The day was cool and breezy. After our dinner we walked up to the foot of the cascade, along the margin of the transparent stream, which meandered amongst great boulders of rock; at the foot we found the rocks rose almost perpendicularly from a charming little basin, into which the stream from above and the spray from below mingled with a most melodious sound, so pleasant to the ear at any time, but how much more to our drought-accustomed senses; continually sounding like the murmur in the sea-shell, which, as the poets say, remembering its ancient and august abode, still murmurs as it murmured then. The water fell from a height of 150 feet; the descent was not quite unbroken. A delightful shower of spray fell for many yards outside the basin, inviting to a bath, which we exquisitely enjoyed; the basin was not more than six feet deep. I am quite delighted with this new feature. There were gorges to the right of us, gorges to the left of us, and there was a gorge all round us. I shall not stay now to explore them, but will enter upon the task con amore when I bring the whole party here. I called these the Alice Falls, after one of my sisters. It was impossible to ascend the mountain via the cascade, so we had to flank it to reach the top. The view from thence, though inspiriting, was still most strange. Ranges upon ranges, some far and some near, bounded the horizon at all points. There was a high, bold-looking, mount or range to the north-west forty or fifty miles off. Up to a certain time we always called this the North-West Mountain, as it bore in that direction when first seen, until we discovered its proper name, when I christened it Mount Destruction. Other ranges intervened much nearer. The particular portion of the range we were now on, was 1000 feet above the surrounding level. I found the boiling-point of water on this summit was 206 degrees, being the same as upon the summit of the Sentinel–that is to say, 3085 feet above the sea. The country intervening between this and the other ranges in view, appeared open and good travelling ground. The ranges beyond this have a brownish tinge, and are all entirely different from those at Fort Mueller. The rock formation here is a white and pinkish conglomerate granite. All the ranges visible are entirely timberless, and are all more or less rounded and corrugated, some having conical summits, and some looking like enormous eggs standing up on end; this for the first view. We descended, caught our horses, and departed for Fort Mueller, much gratified at the discoveries already made at this new geographical feature. On the road back I recovered my glasses. The day was most deliciously cool, there was a sweet perfume in the air, the morning was like one of those, so enjoyable in the spring, in the far-off agricultural districts of the fertile portions of the southern and eastern Colonies. When we reached the red bare hill, fifty miles from home, we found the water had ceased to flow.
At our Emu Tank all the outside surface water was gone, the tank only holding some. Our three horses greatly reduced its volume, and, fearing it would all evaporate before we could return, we cut a quantity of bushes and sticks to protect it from the sun. Remounting, we now made for the native clay-hole that we had avoided in going out. The outside water was now all but gone, but the hole still contained some, though not sufficient for all the horses; we set to work and chopped out another hole with a tomahawk, and drained all the thick water off the clay-pan into it. Then we cut boughs, bushes, and sticks to cover them, and proceeded homewards. On reaching the ten-mile or kangaroo tank, we found to our disgust that the water was nearly all gone, and our original tank not large enough, so we chopped out another and drained all the surplus water into it. Then the boughs and bushes and sticks for a roof must be got, and by the time this was finished we were pretty well sick of tank making. Our hands were blistered, our arms were stiff, and our whole bodies bathed in streams of perspiration, though it was a comparatively cool day. We reached home very late on the 13th, having left the range on the 10th. I was glad to hear that the natives had not troubled the camp in my absence. Another circumstance gratified us also, and that was, Gibson had shot a large wallaby; we had not tasted meat since we left on the 7th.
(ILLUSTRATION: ATTACK AT FORT MUELLER.)
To-day, 14th, we were getting all our packs and things ready for a start into the new and northern regions, when at eleven a.m. Mr. Tietkens gave the alarm that all the rocks overhead were lined with natives, who began to utter the most direful yells so soon as they found themselves discovered. Their numbers were much larger than before, and they were in communication with others in the tea-tree on the opposite side of the creek, whose loud and inharmonious cries made even the heavens to echo with their sounds. They began operations by poising their spears and waving us away. We waited for some little time, watching their movements, with our rifles in our hands. A flight of spears came crashing through the flimsy sides of our house, the roof and west gable being the only parts thickly covered, and they could see us jumping about inside to avoid their spears. Then a flight of spears came from the concealed enemy in the tea-tree. Mr. Tietkens and I rushed out, and fired right into the middle of the crowd. From the rocks behind which they hid, they sent another flight of spears; how we escaped them I can’t imagine. In the meantime Gibson and Jimmy were firing through the boughs, and I decided that it was for us to take the aggressive. We rushed up the rocks after the enemy, when they seemed to drop like caterpillars, as instantaneously, they were all down underneath us right at the camp. I was afraid they would set fire to it; we however finally drove them from our stronghold, inducing them to decamp more or less the worse, and leave behind them a considerable quantity of military stores, in the shape of spears, wommerahs, waddies, wallabies’ skins, owls, fly-flappers, red ochre, and numerous other minor valuables. These we brought in triumph to the camp. It always distressed me to have to fire at these savages, and it was only when our lives were in most imminent danger that we did so, for, as Iago says, though in the trade of war I have slain men, yet do I hold it very stuff o’ the conscience to do no contrived murder. I lack iniquity, sometimes, to do me service. We then went on with our work, though expecting our foes to return, but we were not again molested, as they now probably thought we were vipers that would not stand too much crowding.
Three horses were missing, therefore we could not leave that day, and when they were found on the next, it was too late to start. I tied one of these wretches up all night, so as to get the mob early to-morrow. I was very uneasy about the water in our tanks, as every hour’s delay was of the greatest consequence. I had no very great regret at leaving this depot, except that I had not been able to push out more than 150 miles to the west from it. I now thought by going to the new northern range, that my progress thence might be easier. We may perhaps have paid the passing tribute of a sigh at leaving our little gardens, for the seeds planted in most of them had grown remarkably well. The plants that throve best here were Indian gram, maize, peas, spinach, pumpkins, beans, and cucumbers; melons also grew pretty well, with turnips and mustard. Only two wattles out of many dozens sown here came up, and no eucalypts have appeared, although the seeds of many different kinds were set. Gibson had been most indefatigable in keeping the little gardens in order, and I believe was really grieved to leave them, but the inexorable mandates of circumstance and duty forced us from our pleasant places, to wander into ampler realms and spaces, where no foot has left its traces. Departing, still we left behind us some lasting memorials of our visit to this peculiar place, which, though a city of refuge to us, was yet a dangerous and a dreadful home. The water supply was now better than when we arrived.
“Our fount disappearing,
From the rain-drop did borrow,
To me comes great cheering,
I leave it to-morrow.”
There were a number of opossums here which often damaged the garden produce in the night. There were various dull-plumaged small birds, with hawks, crows, and occasionally ducks, and one abominable croaking creature at night used to annoy me exceedingly, and though I often walked up the glen I could never discover what sort of bird it was. It might have been a raven; yes, a raven never flitting may be sitting, may be sitting, on those shattered rocks of wretchedness–on that Troglodytes’ shore, where in spirit I may wander, o’er those arid regions yonder; but where I wish to squander, time and energies no more. Though a most romantic region, its toils and dangers legion, my memory oft besieging, what time cannot restore; again I hear the shocks of the shattering of the rocks, see the wallabies in flocks, all trembling at the roar, of the volcanic reverberations, or seismatic detonations, which peculiar sensations I wish to know no more. The horses were mustered at last, and at length we were about to depart, not certainly in the direction I should have wished to go, but still to something new.
Fort Mueller, of course, was named after my kind friend the Baron*, who was a personal contributor to the fund for this expedition. It was really the most astonishing place it has ever been my fortune to visit. Occasionally one would hear the metallic sounding clang, of some falling rock, smashing into the glen below, toppled from its eminence by some subterranean tremour or earthquake shock, and the vibrations of the seismatic waves would precipitate the rocks into different groups and shapes than they formerly possessed. I had many strange, almost superstitious feelings with regard to this singular spot, for there was always a strange depression upon my spirits whilst here, arising partly perhaps from the constant dread of attacks from the hostile natives, and partly from the physical peculiarities of the region itself.
“On all there hung a shadow and a fear, A sense of mystery, the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, This region’s haunted.”
On the 16th we departed, leaving to the native owners of the soil, this singular glen, where the water flowed only in the night, where the earthquake and the dry thunderstorm occurred every day, and turned our backs for the last time upon
“Their home by horror haunted,
Their desert land enchanted,”
and plunged again into the northern wilderness.
CHAPTER 2.7. FROM 16TH JANUARY TO 19TH FEBRUARY, 1874.
The Kangaroo Tanks.
Horses stampede.
Water by digging.
Staggering horses.
Deep rock-reservoir.
Glen Cumming.
Mount Russell.
Glen Gerald.
Glen Fielder.
The Alice Falls.
Separated hills.
Splendid-looking creek.
Excellent country.
The Pass of the Abencerrages.
Sladen Water.
An alarm.
Jimmy’s anxiety for a date.
Mount Barlee.
Mount Buttfield.
“Stagning” water.
Ranges continue to the west.
A notch.
Dry rocky basins.
Horses impounded.
Desolation Glen.
Wretched night.
Terrible Billy.
A thick clump of gums.
A strong and rapid stream.
The Stemodia viscosa.
Head-first in a bog.
Leuhman’s Spring.
Groener’s and Tyndall’s Springs.
The Great Gorge.
Fort McKellar.
The Gorge of Tarns.
Ants again.
Swim in the tarn.
View from summit of range.
Altitude.
Tatterdemalions.
An explorer’s accomplishments.
Cool and shady caves.
Large rocky tarn.
The Circus.
High red sandhills to the west.
Ancient lake bed.
Burrowing wallabies.
The North-west Mountain.
Jimmy and the grog bottle.
The Rawlinson Range.
Moth- and fly-catching plant.
An inviting mountain.
Inviting valley.
Fruitless search for water.
Ascend the mountain.
Mount Robert.
Dead and dying horses.
Description of the mob.
Mount Destruction.
Reflections.
Life for water.
Hot winds.
Retreat to Sladen Water.
Wild ducks.
An ornithological lecture.
Shift the camp.
Cockatoo parrots.
Clouds of pigeons.
Dragged by Diaway.
Attacked by the natives.
It was late on the 16th of January when we left Fort Mueller. We reached our first or Kangaroo Tanks in eleven miles, so called as we saw several kangaroos there on our first visit; but only having revolvers, we could not get near enough to shoot any of them. The water had remained in them quite as well as I could expect, but we did not use it that night. The horses were evidently inclined to ramble back, so we short-hobbled them; but as soon as it became dusk, they all went off at a gallop. Mr. Tietkens and I went after them, but the wretches would not allow us to get up with them. The moment they heard us breaking any sticks in the scrubs behind them, off they started again; we had to go five or six miles before we could get hold of any of them, and it being cloudy and dark, we hardly knew which way to drive them back; at length we saw the reflection of a fire, and it proved we were taking them right; it was midnight when we got back. We tied one up and waited for morning, when we found they were all gone again, but having one to ride we thought to get them pretty soon. It now appeared that in the scrubs and darkness last night we had missed three. Now we had to use our tank water, the three missing horses not being found by night. The missing horses were found the next day, the 18th, and we continued our journey from these now empty tanks at twelve o’clock, and reached the native clay-pan tanks by night. The second one we had dug, though well shaded, was quite dry, and the native hole contained only sufficient for about half the horses. Some drank it all up, the rest going without, but we consoled them with the assurance that they should have some when we reached the top or Emu Tank. We wanted to fill up our own water-bags, as our supply was exhausted. On reaching it, however, to our disgust we found it perfectly dry, and as we couldn’t get any water, the only thing to do was to keep pushing on, as far and as fast as we could, towards the Alice Falls. We got some water by digging in a small Grevillea (beef-wood-tree), water-channel, about three miles this side of it. The horses were exceedingly thirsty, and some of them when they got water were afflicted with staggers. The grass was beautifully green. The last few days have been comparatively cool. As the horses had two heavy days’ stages, I did not move the camp, but Mr. Tietkens and I rode off to the main range to explore the gorges we had formerly seen to the east. The country at the foot of the range was very stony, rough, and scrubby. We reached the mouth of the most easterly gorge, tied up our horses, and walked up. We very soon came upon a fine deep long rock-reservoir with water running into and out of it. I could not touch the bottom with over twenty feet of string. The rocky sides of this gorge rose almost perpendicularly above us, and the farther we went up, the more water we saw, until our passage was completely stopped by the abruptness of the walls and the depth of the water at their feet; I called this Glen Cumming*. The particular part or hill of the range on which this reservoir exists I named Mount Russell*; this was the most eastern mount of the range. We then turned westerly towards the Alice Falls, and in a mile and a half we came to another gorge, where there was a cascade falling into a very clear round basin over twenty feet deep, washed out of solid white stone. There were numerous other basins, above and below the large one. I called this place Glen Gerald. Proceeding on our way, we came to another cascade and basin; the fall of water was from a lesser height. I called this Glen Fielder. From here we went to the Alice Falls, rested the horses, and had a swim and delicious shower bath. A warm wind from the south-east prevailed all day.
I wished to find a road through or over this range, but will evidently have to go farther to the west, where at seven or eight miles there are apparently two separate hummocks. We returned to camp quite charmed with our day’s ramble, although the country was very rough and stony. The vegetation about here is in no way different from any which exists between this range and Mount Olga. Making a move now in the direction of the two apparently separated hills, we passed through some scrub of course, and then came to grassy gum-tree or eucalyptus flats, with water-channels. At twelve miles we came fairly on to the banks of a splendid-looking creek, with several sheets of water; its bed was broad, with many channels, the intermediate spaces being thickly set with long coarse green rushes. The flow of the water was to the north, and the creek evidently went through a glen or pass; the timber grew thick and vigorous; the water had a slightly brackish taste. All through the pass we saw several small sheets of water. One fine hole had great quantities of ducks on it, but Gibson, who started to shoot some of them, couldn’t get his gun to go off, but the ducks’ firearms acted much better, for they went off extremely well.
We encamped at a place near a recent native camp, where the grass was very good. This was evidently a permanently watered pass, with some excellent country round it to the south.
The range appeared to continue to the west, and this seemed the only pass through it. I called this the Pass of the Abencerrages–that is to say, the Children of the Saddle. The creek and its waters I named Sladen Water, after the late Sir Charles Sladen*. This evening, having had a comfortable bath, I was getting my blankets ready for bed when Jimmy Andrews came rushing over to me. I immediately grabbed a rifle, as I thought it was an attack by the natives. He merely begged to know what day of the month it was, and requested me to mention the fact, with day and date in my journal, that–yes, Gibson was actually seen in the act of bathing. I thought Jimmy was joking, as this I could not believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes, but there was the naked form, the splashing water, and the swimming dog. It was a circumstance well worth recording, for I am sure it is the first full bodied ablution he has indulged in since leaving Mount Olga, eighteen weeks to a day, and I am not at all sure that he bathed there. It was therefore with great pleasure that I recorded the unusual circumstance. When Jimmy left me grinning, and I had time to get over my surprise, and give mature consideration to this unusual matter, it did seem to me better, having the welfare of the whole of the members of my expedition at heart–I say, it did appear better, on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, that Gibson should endure the agony of an all-over wash, than that we should be attacked and perhaps killed by the natives.
The flies on this range are evidently very numerous, for their attention to our eyes is not only persistent but very annoying.
This morning I made the latitude of this pass to be 24 degrees 58′, and longitude 127 degrees 55′. We followed this creek; travelling along its banks, we found native huts very numerous, and for a few miles some sheets of water were seen; the bed then became too sandy; its course was about north-west. In eight or nine miles we found that sandhill and casuarina country existed, and swallowed up the unfortunate creek. The main line of ranges continued westerly, and, together with another range in front of us to the north, formed a kind of crescent. No pass appeared to exist between them. I now went to the eastern end of a range that lay to the north of us, and passing over a low ridge had a good view of the surrounding country. Ranges appeared in almost all directions; the principal ones lay to the west and north-west. One conspicuous abrupt-faced mount bore north 17 degrees east; this I named Mount Barlee. There were others to the east-north-east, and the long sweep of the range from which we had come to the south. One hill near us looked inviting, and we found a deep rocky gorge with water in its neighbourhood. In fact there were several fine rocky basins ten and twelve feet deep, though they were very rough places to get horses to. I called the high hill Mount Buttfield. It appeared as if no rain had fallen here lately; the water in all these holes was greenish and stagnant, or stagning as Gibson and Jimmy called it. The grass, such as there was, was old, white, and dry. The country down below, north-wards, consisted of open, sandy, level, triodia ground, dotted with a few clumps of the desert oak, giving a most pleasing appearance to the eye, but its reality is startlingly different, keeping, as it were, the word of promise to the eye, but breaking it to the hope. While the horses were being collected this morning I ascended Mount Buttfield, and found that ranges continued to the west for a considerable distance. I now decided to make for a notch or fall in the main range we had left, which now bore nearly west, as there appeared to be a creek issuing from the hills there. Travelling over casuarina sandhills and some level triodia ground, we found there was a creek with eucalypts on it, but it was quite evident that none of the late showers had fallen there. Hardly any grass was to be found, the ground being open and stony, with thorny vegetation.
In the main channel we could only find deep, rocky, dry basins, but up a small branch gorge I found three small basins with a very limited supply of water, not sufficient for my horses both now and in the morning, so we thought it better that they should do without it to-night. Above the camp there was a kind of pound, so we put all the horses up there, as it was useless to let them ramble all over the country in the night. The ants were excessively troublesome here. I could not find sufficient shade for the thermometer to-day, but kept it as cool as I could for fear of its bursting.
This glen, or rather the vegetation which had existed in it, had been recently burned by the natives, and it had in consequence a still more gloomy and dreary appearance. I called it by its proper name, that is to say, Desolation Glen.
I could get no rest last night on account of the ants, the wretches almost ate me alive, and the horses tried so often to pass by the camp that I was delighted at the reappearance of the morn. Mr. Tietkens also had to shift his camp, and drove the horses back, but ants as big as elephants, or an earthquake that would destroy the world, would never wake Gibson and Jimmy. It was difficult to get the horses to the place where the water was, and we could only manage three at a time. There was fortunately just enough water, though none to spare. One old fool of a horse must needs jump into an empty rock basin; it was deep and funnel shaped, so that he could not stand when he got there, so he fell, and had knocked himself about terribly before we could get him out. Indeed, I never thought he could come out whole, and I was preparing to get him out in pieces when he made one last super-equine exertion, and fell up and out at the same time.
The delay in watering the horses, and extracting Terrible Billy from the basin, made it twelve o’clock before we could turn our backs upon this hideous place, hoping to find no more like it. We travelled along the stony slope of the range nearly west, and in less than two miles we crossed a small creek-channel with a thick clump of gum-trees right under the range. The tops of a second clump were also visible about half a mile off. Mr. Tietkens went to search down Desolation Creek. I directed Gibson to go on with the horses to the foot of a hill which I pointed out to him, and to remain there until I overtook him. Up the creek close to the clump of timber the whole glen was choked with a rank vegetation, beneath which the water ran in a strong and rapid stream that issued to the upper air from the bottom of the range. In trying to cross this channel, my horse became entangled in the dense vegetation, whose roots, planted in rich and oozy soil, induced the tops of this remarkable plant to grow ten, twelve, and fifteen feet high. It had a nasty gummy, sticky feel when touched, and emitted a strong, coarse odour of peppermint. The botanical name of this plant is Stemodia viscosa. This vegetation was not substantial enough to sustain my horse, and he plunged so violently that he precipitated me head-first into the oozy, black, boggy mass, and it appeared as though he must be swallowed up alive. I had in such a place great difficulty in getting my saddle, rifle, revolver, and other gear off the animal’s back. I gave up all hopes of recovering the horse, for he had ceased struggling, and was settling down bodily in the morass.
I left him and ran shouting after Gibson and Jimmy, but they were too far away; Mr. Tietkens, however, on his way after them, heard me and rode up. His astonishment was great indeed when I showed him the horse, now deeply imbedded in the bog. The vegetation could hold us up above the running stream, and at last, but how I never could make out, by dint of flogging, helping to lift, and yelling at him, the creature, when he found we were trying to help him, interested himself once more in the matter, and at length we got him out of this bottomless pit. He was white when he went in, but coal black when he came out. There were no rock-holes at the head of this spring; the water drains from underneath the mountains, and is permanent beyond a doubt. I called this Luehman’s Springs. The water appears on the surface for a little over a mile. Having re-saddled my dirty black beast, we went to the next gorge, where the clump of eucalyptus was very thick and fine-looking; the water here springing from the hills as at the last, we were mighty skeery how we approached this. A fine stream of water ran here.
After this we found five other glens with running springs, in about as many miles; they were named respectively, but afterwards, Groener’s and Tyndall’s Springs, the Great Gorge, Fort McKellar*, where I subsequently had a depot, and the Gorge of Tarns. Fort McKellar is the most western water suitable for a depot, and is the most agreeable encampment. Many of these glens had fine rock-holes as well as running springs; most of the channels were full of bulrushes and the peculiar Stemodia. This plant is of a dark-green colour, of a pulpy nature, with a thick leaf, and bears a minute violet-coloured flower. It seemed very singular that all these waters should exist close to the place I called Desolation Glen; it appeared as if it must be the only spot on the range that was destitute of water. After some time spent in exploring these charming places, it was time to look about for the horses, and though Gibson had crossed all these channels within sight of their waters, he never stopped for a moment to see if the horses would drink. We expected to overtake him in a mile or two, as the hill pointed out to him was now close at hand. The country was so solid and stony that we could not follow the tracks of the horses for any distance, they could only be picked up here and there, but the country being open, though rising and falling into gullies and ridges, we thought to see them at any moment, so that, as we had found so many waters and the day was Sunday, I wanted to camp early and rest. Gibson, however, kept driving on, driving on, going in no particular direction–north, north-north-west, north-west, south-west, north again; and having got such a start of us, it was just night when we overtook him, still driving on up a dry creek, going due south, slap into the range amongst rocks and stones, etc. I was greatly annoyed, for, having found six splendid permanent waters, we had to camp without a drop of water either for ourselves or our horses, the animals being driven about the whole day when they might have had a fine day’s rest, with green grass and splendid water. It is impossible to drill sense into some people’s heads; but there–perhaps I had no sense in coming into such a region myself.
A fierce, warm south wind blew all night; the ants were dreadful, and would not allow me to sleep for a minute, though the others did not seem to feel them. The range still continued to the west, and other creeks were visible in that direction, but I decided to return to the last water I had seen–that is to say, at the Gorge of Tarns. Not being able to sleep, I went after the horses long before daylight, and found they had wandered a terrible distance, although short-hobbled. I soon found out the cause, for one horse had been loose all night with his pack on, and had consequently led the others a fine jaunt. When all were found and packed, we returned to the gorge which, in consequence of its having so many splendid basins of deep water, I named as before said. On arriving, we fixed our camp close up to the large basins, but the horses could water a mile below, where some tea-tree grew, and where the water reappeared upon the surface after sinking beneath it. There was some good feed here for the horses, but it was over a very limited area.
We had a swim in the fine rocky tarn, and we were delighted to be joined by Gibson in our ablutions. Could the bottom of this pool be cleared of the loose blocks of stone, gravel, and sand, it would doubtless be found of very great depth; but the rains and floods of ages have nearly filled it with stones, loosened from the upper rocks, and it is only in the crevices between the rocks at the bottom that one can discover the depth to be greater than seven feet. Shade here is very scarce when the sun is overhead, except up around the large basin, where there are caves and overhanging rocky ledges, under which we sit, and over which the splashing waters from their sources above fall into the tarn below.
The view from the top of the range was very similar to that from Mount Buttfield, only that now to the south we could see an horizon of scrub. To the north, the natives were burning the spinifex, and this produced such a haze that no definite view could be obtained. Other portions of the range quite prevented a western view. The altitude of this summit was a little over 3000 feet above sea level.
Not being able to glean any farther information about the surrounding country, we (con)descended to work in the shady caves, swimming and working alternately during the day, for we had plenty of the ever-recurring tasks to do, namely, the repairing of pack-bags and clothes, and the unravelling of canvas for twine.
The first night we passed here was close and hot. We had so much of sewing to do that we set to work with a will; our clothes also require as much attention as the pack-bags and pack-saddles. No one could conceive the amount of tearing and patching that is for ever going on; could either a friend or stranger see us in our present garb, our appearance would scarcely be thought even picturesque; for a more patched and ragged set of tatterdemalions it would be difficult to find upon the face of the earth. We are not, indeed, actually destitute of clothes, but, saving our best for future emergencies, we keep continually patching our worst garments, hence our peculiar appearance, as our hats, shirts, and trousers, are here and there, so quilted with bits of old cloth, canvas, calico, basil, greenhide, and old blanket, that the original garment is scarcely anywhere visible. In the matter of boots the traveller must be able to shoe himself as well as his horses in these wild regions of the west. The explorer indeed should be possessed of a good few accomplishments–amongst these I may enumerate that he should be able to make a pie, shoe himself or his horse, jerk a doggerel verse or two, not for himself, but simply for the benefit or annoyance of others, and not necessarily for publication, nor as a guarantee of good faith; he must be able to take, and make, an observation now and again, mend a watch, kill or cure a horse as the times may require, make a pack-saddle, and understand something of astronomy, surveying, geography, geology, and mineralogy, et hoc, simile huic.
With regard to shoeing oneself, I will give my reader some idea of what strength is required for boots in this country. I repaired mine at Fort Mueller with a double sole of thick leather, with sixty horseshoe nails to each boot, all beautifully clenched within, giving them a soft and Turkish carpet-like feeling to the feet inside; then, with an elegant corona of nail-heads round the heel and plates at the toes, they are perfect dreadnoughts, and with such understandings I can tread upon a mountain with something like firmness, but they were nearly the death of me afterwards for all that.
In the shade of our caves here the thermometer does not rise very high, but in the external glen, where we sleep in the open air, it is no cooler.
On the 29th we left this cool and shady spot–cool and shady, however, only amongst the caves–and continued our march still westward, along the slopes of the range.
In eight miles we crossed ten creeks issuing from glens or gorges in the range; all that I inspected had rocky basins, with more or less water in them. Other creeks were seen ahead, but no view could be got of any horizon to the west; only the northern and eastern ones being open to our view. The country surrounding the range to the north appeared to consist of open red sandhills, with casuarina in the hollows between. At sixteen miles I found a large rocky tarn in a creek-gorge; but little or no grass for the horses–indeed, the whole country at the foot of this range is very bare of that commodity, except at Sladen Water, where it is excellent.
Since we left Sladen Water the horses have not done well, and the slopes of this range being so rough and stony, many of them display signs of sorefootedness. I cannot expect the range to continue farther than another day’s stage; and though I cannot see its end, yet I feel ’tis near.
Many delays by visiting places caused it to be very late when we sat down amongst stones and triodia to devour our frugal supper. A solitary eagle was the monarch of this scene; it was perched upon the highest peak of a bare ridge, and formed a feathery sky-line when looking up the gorge–always there sat the solemn, solitary, and silent bird, like the Lorelei on her rock– above–beautifully, there, as though he had a mission to watch the course of passing events, and to record them in the books of time and fate. There was a larger and semicircular basin still farther up the gorge; this I called the Circus, but this creek and our rock-hole ever after went by the name of the Circus. In a few miles the next day I could see the termination of the range. In nine miles we crossed three creeks, then ascended a hill north of us, and obtained at last a western view. It consisted entirely of high, red sandhills with casuarinas and low mallee, which formed the horizon at about ten miles. The long range that had brought us so far to the west was at an end; it had fallen off slightly in altitude towards its western extremity, and a deep bed of rolling sandhill country, covered with desert vegetation, surrounded it on all sides. Nearer to us, north-westerly, and stretching nearly to west, lay the dry, irregular, and broken expanse of an ancient lake bed. On riding over to it we found it very undefined, as patches of sandhills occurred amongst low ridges of limestone, with bushes and a few low trees all over the expanse. There were patches of dry, soda-like particles, and the soil generally was a loose dust coloured earth. Samphire bushes also grew in patches upon it, and some patches of our arch-enemy, triodia. Great numbers of wallaby, a different kind from the rock, were seen amongst the limestone rises; they had completely honeycombed all we inspected. Water there was none, and if Noah’s deluge visited this place it could be conveniently stowed away, and put out of sight in a quarter of an hour.
Returning to the horses, we turned southerly to the most westerly creek that issues from the range. I found some water up at the head of it in rock-holes; but it was so far up easterly, that we could not have been more than five or six miles across the hills from our last night’s encampment at the Circus. There was only a poor supply of water in two small holes, which could not last longer than three days at the most. The thermometer ranged up to 104 degrees to-day. Some of the horses are now terribly footsore. I would shoe them, only that we are likely to be in the sandhills again immediately. I did not exactly know which way to go. Mr. Tietkens and I ascended the highest hill in this part of the range. I had yesterday seen something like the top of a ridge south-westerly; I now found it was part of a low distant range, and not of a very promising nature. There was a conspicuous mountain, which now bore north-east about fifty miles away, and I fancied I saw the refracted tops of other ranges floating in the mirage. I thought, from the mountain just mentioned, I might discover others, which might lead me away to the west. Up to the present time we had always called this, in consequence of its bearing when first seen, the North-west Mountain. I thought a change of country might be met with sooner in a north or north-westerly direction than in a west or south-westerly one, as the sources of the Murchison River must be met somewhere in the former direction. I tried the boiling-point of water here, and found that the ebullition occurred at two degrees higher than at the Alice Falls, which indicated a fall of nearly 1000 feet, the western end of the range being much lower than the middle or eastern. We had still a couple of bottles of spirit left in the medical department, and as nobody seemed inclined to get ill, we opened one here. Jimmy Andrews having been a sailor boy, I am afraid had learnt bad habits, as he was very fond of grog. When we opened the last bottle at Christmas, and Jimmy had had a taste, he said, “What’s the use of only a nobbler or two? I wouldn’t give a d–,” dump, I suppose he meant, “for grog unless I could get drunk.” I said, “Well, now, my impression is that it would require very little grog to do that.” He said, “Why, I’d drink six bottles off and never know it.” I said, “Well, the next bottle we open you shall have as much out of it as you can take in one drink, even if you drink the whole bottle.” He replied, “Oh, all right, I’ll leave a nobbler for you, you know, Mr. Giles; and I’d like to give Tietkens a taste; but that [adjective] Gibson, I’ll swear he won’t git none.” So we opened the bottle, and I said, “Now then, Jimmy, here’s your grog, let’s see how much you can drink.” “Oh!” said he,” I ain’t going to drink it all at once.” “All right,” I said, “if you don’t, we shall–so now is your chance.” Jimmy poured out a good stiff glass and persisted in swallowing it raw. In five minutes he was fast asleep, and that was all he got out of the bottle; he never woke till morning, and then–well, the bottle was empty then.
My readers will form a better idea of this peculiar and distant mountain range when I tell them that it is more than sixty miles long, averaging five or six miles through. It is of a bold and rounded form; there is nothing pointed or jagged in its appearance anywhere, except where the eagle sat upon the rock at the Circus; its formation is mostly a white conglomerate, something between granite, marble, and quartz, though some portions are red. It is surrounded, except to the east, by deserts, and may be called the monarch of those regions where the unvisited mountains stand. It possesses countless rocky glens and gorges, creeks and valleys, nearly all containing reservoirs of the purest water. When the Australian summer sunset smooths the roughness of the corrugated range, like a vast and crumpled garment, spread by the great Creator’s hand, east and west before me stretching, these eternal mountains stand. It is a singular feature in a strange land, and God knows by what beady drops of toilsome sweat Tietkens and I rescued it from its former and ancient oblivion. Its position in latitude is between the 24th and 25th parallels, and its longitude between 127 degrees 30′ and 128 degrees 30′. I named it the Rawlinson Range, after Sir Henry Rawlinson, President of the Royal Geographical Society of London. I found a singular moth- and fly-catching, plant in this range; it exudes a gummy substance, by which insects become attached to the leaves. The appearance of this range from a distance is white, flat, corrugated, rounded, and treeless. It rises between 1100 and 1200 feet in its highest portions, about the centre, in the neighbourhood of Fort McKellar, above the surrounding country, though its greatest elevation above the sea is over 3000 feet.
On the 1st of February, after a very hot night, we made a late start for the North-west Mountain, which now bore nearly north-east. It took some miles to get clear of the stones of the range, the appearance of the new feature we were steering for being most inviting. Its corrugated front proclaimed the existence of ravines and gorges, while a more open valley ran between it and some lower hills immediately to the west of it.
The horses were so delighted to get off the stones, that they travelled uncommonly fast, and we got over twenty-eight miles by night, though the country was exceedingly heavy travelling, being all high, red sandhills, and until near the end of our day’s stage we could scarcely ever see the mountain at all. We encamped without water, but I expected to get some early next day at the mountain. Two of the horses lay down at the camp all night, being thirsty, tired, and footsore; there was no grass for them. The thermometer to-day indicated 108 degrees in the shade. A great number of the horses, from being footsore, were lying down this morning, and when mustered they all looked excessively hollow and thirsty. If no water be found at this mountain, how many of them will be alive in a couple of days? Yesterday we made twenty-eight, and to-day at twenty-three, miles we reached the foot of the mount. There was an inviting valley, up which we took the horses a mile. Then, leaving Gibson and Jimmy to await our return, Mr. Tietkens and I rode away in search of water. It was evident that only a trifling shower, if any, had visited this range, for not a drop of water could be found, nor any rock reservoirs where it might lodge. We parted company, and searched separately, but when we met again we could only report to each other our non-success. It was now past two o’clock, our horses had been ridden somewhat fast over the most horrible and desolate stony places, where no water is, and they were now in a very exhausted state, especially Mr. Tietkens’s.
There were yet one or two ravines in the southern face of the range, and while I ascended the mountain, Mr. Tietkens and the others took the horses round that way and searched. From the summit of this sterile mount I had expected at least a favourable view, but to my intense disappointment nothing of the kind was to be seen. Two little hills only, bearing 20 and 14 degrees west of north, were the sole objects higher than the general horizon; the latter was formed entirely of high, red sandhills, with casuarina between. To the east only was a peaked and jagged range, which I called Mount Robert, after my brother; all the rest was a bed of undulating red sand. What was to be hoped from a region such as this? Could water exist in it? It was scarcely possible. For an independent watercourse I could not hope, because in the many hundreds of miles westward from the telegraph line which we had travelled, no creek had been met, except in the immediate vicinity of ranges, and not a drop of water, so to speak, had I obtained away from these. I was upon the point of naming this Mount Disappointment, it looked so inviting from a distance, and yet I could find no water; and if none here, what possibility could there be of getting any in the midst of the dense bed of sandhills beyond? I did not test the boiling-point of water, for I had none to boil, but the elevation was about 1100 feet above the surrounding country. From a distance this mount has a very cheering and imposing appearance, and I would have gone to it from almost any distance, with a full belief in its having water about it. But if, indeed, the inland mountain has really voice and sound, what I could gather from the sighings of the light zephyrs that fanned my heated brow, as I stood gazing hopelessly from this summit, was anything but a friendly greeting, it was rather a warning that called me away; and I fancied I could hear a voice repeating, Let the rash wand’rer here beware; Heaven makes not travellers its peculiar care.
Descending now, I joined the others at the foot of the hill, when Mr. Tietkens and Gibson informed me they had searched everywhere, but in vain. The horses were huddled together in the shade of a thicket, three or four of them lying down with their packs on, and all looking the pictures of wretchedness and woe. It was now past four o’clock, and there was no alternative but to retreat.
The Gorge of Tarns, thirty miles away, about south-south-west, was the nearest water, but between us and it was another low range with a kind of saddle or break in the middle. I wished, if possible, to get over this before night, so we turned the horses’ heads in that direction. One fine horse called Diamond seemed suffering more than the rest. Mr. Tietkens’s riding-horse, a small blue roan, a very game little animal that had always carried him well, albeit not too well treated, was also very bad, and two others were very troublesome to drive along. The saddle in the low range was a most difficult and stony pass; so dreadfully rough and scrubby was it, I was afraid that night would descend upon us before we could reach the southern side. Mr. Tietkens’s Bluey gave in here, and fell heavily down a stony slope into a dense thicket of scrub; we had the greatest difficulty in getting him out, and it was only by rolling him over the stones and down the remainder of the slope, for he could not stand, that we got him to the bottom. He was severely cut and bruised in the descent. We just managed to get clear of the stones by dark, and unpacked the exhausted animals, which had been travelling almost ever since daylight. We had no water except a mouthful for the little dog. The thermometer stood at 108 degrees, ourselves and our horses were choking for water.
In the morning several of the horses were lying dying about the camp; Bluey, Diamond, a little cob–mate or brother of the one killed on Elder’s Creek–and one or two more, while those that were able had wandered away. Though we were up and after them at three in the morning, it was ten before I could despatch Mr. Tietkens and Jimmy with the main mob. Poor little Bluey died soon after sunrise. Gibson was after the absent horses, which he brought at length, and we packed up and went after the others. Gibson’s usual riding-horse, Trew, was very bad, and quite unable to carry him. Mr. Tietkens was now riding an old horse which I had purchased in Victoria, and had owned for some time; he was called Widge. I had him out on my former expedition. He was a cool, calculating villain, that no ordinary work could kill, and he was as lively as a cricket when Mr. Tietkens rode him away; he usually carried a pack. Jimmy carried the little dog Cocky, now nearly dead from thirst and heat, though we had given him the last drop of water we possessed. Dogs, birds, and large beasts in Australia often die of heat, within sight of water. Jimmy was mounted on a gray-hipped horse, which was also out on my former trip; he carried his rider well to the end. Gibson I had mounted on a young bay mare, a creature as good as they make them; she was as merry and gay, as it is possible for any of her sex, even of the human kind, to be. Her proper name was the Fair Maid of Perth; but somehow, from her lively, troublesome, and wanton vagaries, they called her the Sow-Cow. My own riding-horse, a small, sleek, cunning little bay, a fine hack with excellent paces, called W.A., I also had out previously. He would pull on his bridle all day long to eat, he would even pretend to eat spinifex; he was now very bad and footsore. Gibson and I overtook Mr. Tietkens and Jimmy, and we pushed on as fast as we could, the distance we had now to go, not being more than ten or eleven miles. The sandhills were exceedingly high and severe, but all the horses got over the last one.
We were now in full view of the range, with the Gorge of Tarns not more than five miles away. But here Diamond and another, Pratt, that I had out by myself at the stinking pit in November, fell, never to rise. We took off their packs and left them on the ground. The thermometer then stood at 106 degrees in the shade. We pushed on, intending to return immediately with water to the relief of these unfortunates. The pack-horses now presented a demoralised and disorganised rout, travelling in a long single file, for it was quite impossible to keep the tail up with the leaders. I shall try to give my reader some slight idea of them, if description is sufficiently palpable to do so. The real leader was an old black mare, blear-eyed from fly-wounds, for ever dropping tears of salt rheum, fat, large, strong, having carried her 180 pounds at starting, and now desperately thirsty and determined, knowing to an inch where the water was; on she went, reaching the stony slopes about two miles from the water. Next came a rather herring-gutted, lanky bay horse, which having been bought at the Peake, I called Peveril; he was generally poor, but always able, if not willing, for his work. Then came a big bay cob, and an old flea-bitten gray called Buggs, that got bogged in the Stemodia viscosa Creek, and a nuggetty-black harness-horse called Darkie, always very fat. These last three carried 200 pounds each at starting. Then Banks, the best saddle-horse I have, and which I had worked too much in dry trips before reaching this range; he was very much out of sorts and footsore. Then an iron-grey colt, called Diaway, having been very poor and miserable when first purchased, but he was a splendid horse. Then came the sideways-going old crab, Terrible Billy. He was always getting into the most absurd predicaments–poor old creature; got down our throats at last!–falling into holes, and up and down slopes, going at them sideways, without the slightest confidence in himself, or apparent fear of consequences; but the old thing always did his work well enough. Blackie next, a handsome young colt with a white stripe down his face, and very fast; and Formby, a bay that had done excellent harness-work with Diamond on the road to the Peake; he was a great weight-carrier. The next was Hollow Back, who had once been a fine-paced and good jumping horse, but now only fit for packing; he was very well bred and very game. The next was Giant Despair, a perfect marvel. He was a chestnut, old, large-framed, gaunt, and bony, with screwed and lately staked feet. Life for him seemed but one unceasing round of toil, but he was made of iron; no distance and no weight was too much for him. He sauntered along after the leaders, looking not a whit the worse than when he left the last water, going neither faster nor slower than his wont. He was dreadfully destructive with his pack-bags, for he would never get out of the road for anything less than a gum-tree. Tommy and Badger, two of my former expedition horses; Tommy and Hippy I bought a second time from Carmichael, when coming up to the Peake. Tommy was poor, old, and footsore, the most wonderful horse for his size in harness I ever saw. Badger, his mate, was a big ambling cob, able to carry a ton, but the greatest slug of a horse, I ever came across; he seems absolutely to require flogging as a tonic; he must be flogged out of camp, and flogged into it again, mile after mile, day after day, from water and to it. He was now, as usual, at the tail of the straggling mob, except Gibson’s former riding-horse called Trew. He was an excellent little horse, but now so terribly footsore he could scarcely drag himself along; he was one of six best of the lot. If I put them in their order I should say, Banks, the Fair Maid of Perth, Trew, Guts (W.A.), Diaway, Blackie and Darkie, Widge, the big cob Buggs–the flea-bitten grey–Bluey, Badger, who was a fine ambling saddle-horse, and Tommy; the rest might range anyhow. The last horse of all was the poor little shadow of a cob, the harness-mate of the one killed at Elder’s Creek. On reaching the stones this poor little ghost fell, never again to rise. We could give him no relief, we had to push on. Guts gave in on the stones; I let him go and walked to the water. I need scarcely say how thirsty we all were. On reaching the water, and wasting no time, Mr. Tietkens and I returned to the three fallen horses, taking with us a supply of water, and using the Fair Maid, Widge, Formby, and Darkie; we went as fast as the horses could go. On reaching the little cob we found him stark and stiff, his hide all shrivelled and wrinkled, mouth wide open, and lips drawn back to an extraordinary extent. Pushing on we arrived where Diamond and Pratt had fallen. They also were quite dead, and must have died immediately after they fell; they presented the same appearance as the little cob. Thus my visit to the North-west Mountain had cost the lives of four horses, Bluey, Diamond, Pratt, and the cob. The distance they had to travel was not great–less than ninety miles–and they were only two nights without water; but the heat was intense, the country frightful, and to get over the distance as soon as possible, we may have travelled rather fast. The horses had not been well off for either grass or water at starting, and they were mostly footsore; but in the best of cases, and under the most favourable start from a water, the ephemeral thread of a horse’s life may be snapped in a moment, in the height of an Australian summer, in such a region as this, where that detestable vegetation, the triodia, and high and rolling sandhills exist for such enormous distances. The very sight of the country, in all its hideous terrors clad, is sufficient to daunt a man and kill a horse. I called the vile mountain which had caused me this disaster, Mount Destruction, for a visit to it had destroyed alike my horses and my hopes. I named the range of which it is the highest point, Carnarvon Range.
We returned again to the Gorge of Tarns, as Mr. Tietkens very tritely remarked, sadder but wiser men. Our position here is by no means enviable, for although there is plenty of permanent water in this range, it appears to be surrounded by such extensive deserts that advance or retreat is equally difficult, as now I had no water in tanks or otherwise between this and Fort Mueller, and not a horse might ever reach that goal. I am again seated under the splashing fountain that falls from the rocks above, sheltered by the sunless caverns of this Gorge of Tarns, with a limpid liquid basin of the purest water at my feet, sheltered from the heated atmosphere which almost melts the rocks and sand of the country surrounding us–sitting as I may well declare in the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, but we cannot shut out from the mind the perils we have endured, the perils we may yet have to endure. For the present our wants and those of our gallant horses are supplied, but to the traveller in such a wilderness, when he once turns his back upon a water, the ever-recurring question presents itself, of when and where shall I obtain more? The explorer is necessarily insatiable for water; no quantity can satisfy him, for he requires it always and in every place. Life for water he will at any moment give, for water cannot be done without. Thermometer in outer shade 106 degrees; in the caverns 98 degrees.
We shall have to remain here for a few days. The bare rocks in this glen and the walls of stone that form it become so heated during the day that the nights passed in it are most oppressive. The rocks have not time to cool before the sun is upon them again, and at evening, when descending from the caves, we find the thermometer actually rises in the night air. In the caves during to-day it was 98 degrees, and at eight o’clock at night outside it was 101 degrees. We are pestered here terribly by flies, but not plagued by either ants or mosquitoes. This evening Gibson and Jimmy shot three wallabies. This range swarms also with pigeons in every gorge and glen, and they come in clouds at night and morning for water. Unfortunately nearly all our sporting ammunition is gone, though I have a good supply of defensive. To-day the thermometer in the caves was only 88 degrees while in the outside shade 104 degrees, the cause being hot winds from the south-east. While here we shod the most tender-footed of our horses. There was a good deal of thunder and lightning. The daytime in this gorge is less oppressive than the night. The sun does not appear over the eastern hills until nearly nine o’clock, and it passes behind the western ones at about 4.15 p.m. The horses cannot recover well here, the ground being too stony, and the grass and herbage too poor; therefore I shall retreat to the Pass of the Abencerrages and the pleasant encampment of Sladen Water. One horse, Tommy, was still very bad, and had to be left on the road, not from want of water, but old age and exhaustion. I sent for him the next day, and he rejoined the mob. We got back on the 12th of February; there was a fine lot of ducks when we arrived, but those sportsmen Gibson and Jimmy went blazing away as usual without getting one, wasting the powder and shot, which has now become such a scarcity, and losing and making the ducks wild into the bargain. The birds were so frightened that they split into several mobs, and only one mob of eight remained at the pass. I wanted to get these, and went to some trouble to do so. I first walked away and got a horse, and riding him bare-backed I drove the ducks quietly down to the camp water-hole, but the moment they arrived, I being behind with the horse, Gibson and Jimmy must needs go blazing away at them again, although they knew they could never hit any of them; and just as I arrived I heard the report and saw all the ducks come flying overhead up the pass. They went up therefore through the regions of the air singing sweetly as they went, but I did not sing so sweetly on the occasion. Then ensued quite a scientific little ornithological lecture on my part, referring mostly to the order of ducks, and the species known as wild ones more particularly, and I explained the subject to them in such a plain and forcible manner that both of them admitted they quite understood what I was talking about, which is a great matter for lecturers to consider, because if, after a forcible harangue, a speaker’s audience is in any way mystified, or not in touch with him as to the meaning of his remarks, why, then, his time and labour are both lost; therefore I purposely refrained from any ambiguity, and delivered my figures of speech and rounded periods in words suitable for the most ordinary comprehension, and I really think it had a good effect on both of them. Of course I addressed them more in sorrow than in anger, although the loss of eight ducks was a frightfully heavy one to all of us; but I was partially consoled with the thought that they would have to bear their share of the loss. A few hours afterwards I went after the ducks again, and by good fortune bagged six in one shot; one got away in the bushes, and the other flew away; and he seemed to me to have a very crooked flew at that. These were the fattest birds I ever ate. We had a fine supper of ducks, their flavour being sup(p)er-excellent.
(ILLUSTRATION: DRAGGED BY DIAWAY.)
(ILLUSTRATION: ATTACK AT SLADEN WATER.)
The ants were terribly troublesome at this waterhole, although we slept on the damp sand; so we shifted the camp up to the sweet water-hole, and selected as open a piece of ground as possible, as I intended the camp to remain here for a week or two. More thunder and lightning, with great heat and a few drops of rain. Thermometer, 106 degrees. There were countless numbers of the little cockatoo parrots here; they are very shy, and even when Gibson or Jimmy lets off a gun at them, a dozen or two are sure to fall; it takes some time, however, before another shot can be had at them. I fancy they are migrating. The pigeons swarm at night to water. I intend to visit the ridges which I mentioned as lying to the south-west, from the west end of this range. We shod the old black mare, Diaway, and old Buggs, to take with us. The 18th of February, 1874, was like to have proved a most eventful day in my life, for it was very nearly the termination of it. I was riding Diaway, the colt just shod; he is seldom ridden, though a very fine hack, as he is such a splendid weight-carrier as a packhorse; he is rather skittish, and if anything goes wrong with his pack, he’ll put it right (on the ground) almost instantaneously. I was driving all the horses up to the camp, when one broke from the mob, and galloped across the creek. There was a bank of stones about three feet high, which was hidden by a growth of rushes; Diaway went bounding over the great bushes and inequalities of the channel, and reached the bank without seeing it, until too late, when he made a bound at, but fell on the top of, it, rolling over upon me at the same time. He scrambled up, but left me on the broad of my back. On my feet were those wonderful boots before described, with the sixty horseshoe nails in each, and it was no wonder that one of my feet got caught in the stirrup on the off side of the horse. It is one of the most horrible positions that the mind can well imagine, to contemplate being dragged by a horse. I have been dragged before now, and only escaped by miracles on each occasion. In this case, Diaway, finding me attached to him, commenced to lash out his newly shod heels at me, bounding away at the same time into a dense thicket of scrub close by. Mr. Tietkens and the others seeing the accident came running up behind, as Diaway and I were departing. Fortunately I was not dragged far, but was literally kicked free from and by, the frightened and uncontrolled animal. The continual kickings I received–some on my legs and body, but mostly upon that portion of the frame which it is considered equally indecorous to present either to a friend or an enemy–at length bent one or two of the nail-heads which held me, and, tearing the upper leather off my boot, which fortunately was old, ripped it off, leaving me at length free. As I lay on my excoriated back, I saw Diaway depart without me into the scrub, with feelings of the most profound delight, although my transports were considerably lessened by the agonising sensations I experienced. Mr. Tietkens helped me to hobble over to the camp in a most disorganised state, though thanking Providence for so fortunate an escape. Had Diaway but entered the scrub not two yards from where I was released, I could not have existed more than a minute. The following day Mr. Tietkens was getting everything ready to go with me to the south-west ridges, though I had great doubts of my ability to ride, when we became aware of the presence of a whole host of natives immediately below the camp. All the morning the little dog had been strangely perturbed, and we knew by the natives’ fires that they were in our immediate neighbourhood. There was so much long grass and tall rushes in the creek bed, that they could approach very close before we could possibly see them. So soon as they found themselves detected, as usual they set up the most horrible yells, and, running up on the open ground, sent a flight of spears at us before a rifle or a gun could be seized, and we had to jump behind a large bush, that I left standing on purpose, to escape. Our stand of arms was there, and we immediately seized them, sending the bullets flying just above their heads and at their feet. The report of the weapons and the whirring sound of the swiftly passing shots made them pause, and they began an harangue, ordering us out of their territories, to the south. Seeing us, however, motionless and silent, their courage returned, and again they advanced, uttering their war cries with renewed energy. Again the spears would have been amongst us; but I, not relishing even the idea of barbed spears being stuck through my body, determined not to permit either my own or any of my party’s lives to be lost for the sake of not discharging my firearms. Consequently we at length succeeded in causing a rout, and driving the enemy away. There were a great number of natives in the bushes, besides those who attacked us. There were not many oldish men among them, only one with grey hair. I am reminded here to mention that in none of my travels in these western wilds have I found any places of sepulture of any kind. The graves are not consumed by the continual fires that the natives keep up in their huntings, for that would likewise be the fate of their old and deserted gunyahs, which we meet with frequently, and which are neither all nor half destroyed. Even if the natives put no boughs or sticks upon their graves, we must see some mounds or signs of burial-places, if not of bones or skulls. My opinion is, that these people eat their aged ones, and most probably those who die from natural causes also.
It was a cool, breezy day, and, in consequence of the hostile action of the natives, I did not depart on the south-west excursion. I was not sorry to delay my departure, for I was in great pain all over. I now decided to leave Mr. Tietkens and take Jimmy with me. I cannot say I anticipate making any valuable discovery on this trip; for had there been ranges of any elevation to the westward, or beyond the ridges in question, I should in all probability have seen them from the end of this range, and should have visited them in preference to Mount Destruction. I felt it incumbent on me to visit them, however, as from them I might obtain a view of some encouraging features beyond.
CHAPTER 2.8. FROM 20TH FEBRUARY TO 12TH MARCH, 1874.
Journey south-west.
Glens and springs.
Rough watering-place.
A marble bath.
Glassy rocks.
Swarms of ants.
Solitary tree.
An oven.
Terrible night.
And day.
Wretched appearance of the horses.
Mountains of sand.
Hopeless view.
Speculations.
In great pain.
Horses in agony.
Difficulty in watering them.
Another night of misery.
Dante’s Inferno.
The waters of oblivion.
Return to the pass.
Dinner of carrion.
A smoke-house.
Tour to the east.
Singular pinnacle.
Eastern ranges.
A gum creek.
Basins of water.
Natives all around.
Teocallis.
Horrid rites.
A chip off the old block.
A wayside inn.
Gordon’s Springs.
Taking Jimmy and three horses, we travelled, after clearing the pass, on the south slopes of the range westward, crossing several small creek-channels, which might or might not have waters in them. At twelve miles we came to a green-looking channel and found water, running so far down as a rocky hole, near where we crossed. We outspanned here for an hour, as I found riding very severe toil after my late kicking. I named this secluded but pretty little spot, Glen Helen. It was very rough travelling ground–worse than on the northern side of the range. Three miles farther, we crossed another running water, and called it Edith Hull’s Springs. At ten miles farther, after crossing several channels, we turned up one, and got some water in a very rough and stony gorge off the main channel, which was dry. There was very poor feed, but we were compelled to remain, as there was no other creek in sight for some miles, and the horses, although shod, could only travel slowly over the terribly rough ground. When we turned them out, they preferred to stand still, rather than roam about among the rocks and boulders for food. The day was cool; the southern horizon, the only one we could see, was bounded entirely by red sandhills and casuarina timber. The horses ate nothing all night, and stood almost where they were hobbled.
In this region, and in the heat of summer, the moment horses, no matter how fat and fresh they may be, are taken away from their companions to face the fearful country that they know is before them, they begin to fret and fall away visibly. They will scarcely eat, and get all the weaker in consequence, and then they require twice as much water as they otherwise would if their insides were partly filled with grass. When I released our three from the hobbles this morning, they immediately pretended to feed; but this old ruse has been experienced before, and time was now up, to move on again. They were very thirsty, and nearly emptied the rock basin, where we had a kind of bath before starting. Along the foot-hills over which we were obliged to travel, the country was much rougher than yesterday; so much so, that I kept away as much as possible. At twenty miles we turned up a creek-channel, which proved to be a dreadful gorge, being choked up with huge boulders of red and white granite. Among these I found a fine rock tarn; indeed, I might call it a marble bath, for the rock was almost pure white, and perfectly bare all round. The water was considerably over our heads, and felt as cold as ice. It was a dreadful place to get horses up to, and two of them fell two or three times on the glassy, shelving, and slippery rocks. The old grey, Buggs, hurt himself a good deal.
Time seems to fly in these places, except when you want it to do so, and by the time the horses got down from the water the day was nearly gone. The feed for them was very little better than at our last night’s camp, nor was the glen any less stony or rough. The day was 12 degrees hotter than yesterday; the thermometer indicated 104 degrees. The ants in this glen were frightful; they would not allow me a moment’s rest anywhere. There was but one solitary eucalyptus or gum-tree, and in its scanty shade they swarmed in countless myriads. The sun poured his fiery beams full down upon us, and it was not until he departed over the cliffs to the west that we had a moment’s respite; the place was a perfect oven.
I passed the time mostly in the marble bath, and then took a walk up to the top of the range and could see the hills I desired to visit; they now bore nearly south-west. So long as the sun’s rays were pouring down upon their unsheltered hides, the horses would not attempt to eat, but when he departed they fed a little on the coarse vegetation. This glen, like all the others in this range, swarmed with pigeons, and we got enough for breakfast at one shot. During the hot months, I believe whites could live entirely on pigeons in this range. At the camp at Sladen Water they came to the water in clouds, their very numbers sometimes preventing us getting a good shot, and we had been living entirely on them, for now we had no other meat. Unfortunately, our ammunition is almost exhausted, but so long as it lasts we shall have birds. When it is gone we must eat horseflesh, and should have been driven to do so before now, only for these birds. I have an old horse now fattening for the knife, and I am sorry, i.e. happy, to say, whenever I inspect him he looks better. The one I mean is the old sideways-going Terrible Billy. Poor old creature! To work so many years as he has done for man, and then to be eaten at last, seems a hard fate; but who or what can escape that inexorable shadow, death?
It may be the destiny of some of ourselves to be eaten; for I fully believe the natives of these regions look upon all living organisms as grist for their insatiable mills. As night came on, I was compelled to lie down at last, but was so bitten and annoyed by the ants, that I had to keep moving about from place to place the whole night long, while the [in]sensible Jimmy lay sleeping and snoring, though swarmed over and almost carried away by the ants, as peacefully as though he had gone to rest under the canopy of costly state, and lulled with sounds of sweetest melody. I could not help moralising, as I often stood near him, wondering at his peace and placidity, upon the differences of our mental and physical conditions: here was one human being, young and strong, certainly, sleeping away the, to me, dreary hours of night, regaining that necessary vigour for the toils of the coming day, totally oblivious of swarms of creeping insects, that not only crawled all over him, but constantly bit into his flesh; while another, who prided himself perhaps too much upon the mental powers bestowed by God upon him, was compelled by the same insects to wander through the whole night, from rock to rock and place to place, unable to remain for more than a moment or two anywhere; and to whom sleep, under such circumstances, was an utter impossibility. Not, indeed, that the loss of sleep troubles me, for if any one could claim to be called the sleepless one, it would be I–that is to say, when engaged in these arduous explorations, and curtained by night and the stars; but, although I can do without sleep, I require a certain amount of horizontal repose, and this I could not obtain in this fearful glen. It was, therefore, with extreme pleasure that I beheld the dawn, and:–
“To the eastward where, cluster by cluster, Dim stars and dull planets that muster, Waxing wan in a world of white lustre, That spread far and high.”
No human being could have been more pleased than I at the appearance of another day, although I was yet doomed to several hours more misery in this dreadful gorge. The pigeons shot last night were covered within and without by ants, although they had been put in a bag. The horses looked wretched, even after watering, and I saw that it was actually necessary to give them a day’s rest before I ventured with them into the frightful sandhills which I could see intervened between us and the distant ridges. Truly the hours I spent in this hideous gorge were hours of torture; the sun roasted us, for there was no shade whatever to creep into; the rocks and stones were so heated that we could neither touch, nor sit upon them, and the ants were more tormenting than ever. I almost cried aloud for the mountains to fall upon me, and the rocks to cover me. I passed several hours in the marble bath, the only place the ants could not encroach upon, though they swarmed round the edge of the water. But in the water itself were numerous little fiendish water-beetles, and these creatures bit one almost as badly as the ants. In the bath I remained until I was almost benumbed by the cold. Then the sunshine and the heat in the gorge would seem delightful for a few minutes, till I became baked with heat again. The thermometer stood at 106 degrees in the shade of the only tree. At three p.m. the horses came up to water. I was so horrified with the place I could no longer remain, though Jimmy sat, and probably slept, in the scanty one tree’s shade, and seemed to pass the time as comfortably as though he were in a fine house. In going up to the water two of the horses again fell and hurt themselves, but the old blear-eyed mare never slipped or fell. At four p.m. we mounted, and rode down the glen until we got clear of the rough hills, when we turned upon our proper course for the ridges, which, however, we could not see. In two or three miles we entered the sandhill regions once more, when it soon rose into hills. The triodia was as thick and strong as it could grow. The country was not, so to say, scrubby, there being only low bushes and scrubs on the sandhills, and casuarina trees of beautiful outline and appearance in the hollows. When the horses got clear of the stones they began to eat everything they could snatch and bite at.
At fifteen miles from the gorge we encamped on a patch of dry grass. The horses fed pretty well for a time, until the old mare began to think it time to be off, and she soon would have led the others back to the range. She dreaded this country, and knew well by experience and instinct what agony was in store for her. Jimmy got them back and short-hobbled them. There were plenty of ants here, but nothing to be compared to the number in the gorge, and having to remove my blankets only three or four times, I had a most delightful night’s rest, although, of course, I did not sleep. The horses were sulky and would not eat; therefore they looked as hollow as drums, and totally unfit to traverse the ground that was before them. However, this had to be done, or at least attempted, and we got away early. We were in the midst of the sandhills, and here they rose almost into mountains of sand. It was most fatiguing to the horses, the thermometer 104 degrees in the shade when we rested at twenty-two miles. Nor was this the hottest time of the day. We had been plunging through the sand mountains, and had not sighted the ridges, for thirty-seven miles, till at length we found the nearest were pretty close to us. They seemed very low, and quite unlikely to produce water. Reaching the first, we ascended it, and I could see at a glance that any prospect of finding water was utterly hopeless, as these low ridges, which ran north and south, were merely a few oblique-lying layers of upheaved granite, not much higher than the sandhills which surrounded them, and there was no place where water could lodge even during rains. Not a rise could be seen in any direction, except, of course, from where we had come. We went on west five or six miles farther to the end of these, just about sundown: and long, indeed, will that peculiar sunset rest in my recollection. The sun as usual was a huge and glaring ball of fire that with his last beams shot hot and angry glances of hate at us, in rage at our defiance of his might. It was so strange and so singular that only at this particular sunset, out of the millions which have elapsed since this terrestrial ball first floated in ether, that I, or indeed any White man, should stand upon this wretched hill, so remote from the busy haunts of my fellow men. My speculations upon the summit, if, indeed, so insignificant a mound can be said to have a summit, were as wild and as incongruous as the regions which stretched out before me. In the first place I could only conclude that no water could exist in this region, at least as far as the sand beds extend. I was now, though of course some distance to the south also, about thirty miles to the west of the most western portion of the Rawlinson Range.
From that range no object had been visible above the sandhills in any westerly direction, except these ridges I am now upon, and from these, if any other ranges or hills anywhere within a hundred miles of the Rawlinson existed, I must have sighted them. The inference to be drawn in such a case was, that in all probability this kind of country would remain unaltered for an enormous distance, possibly to the very banks of the Murchison River itself. The question very naturally arose, Could the country be penetrated by man, with only horses at his command, particularly at such a heated time of year? Oh, would that I had camels! What are horses in such a region and such a heated temperature as this? The animals are not physically capable of enduring the terrors of this country. I was now scarcely a hundred miles from the camp, and the horses had plenty of water up to nearly halfway, but now they looked utterly unable to return. What a strange maze of imagination the mind can wander in when recalling the names of those separated features, the only ones at present known to supply water in this latitude–that is to say, the Murchison River, and this new-found Rawlinson Range, named after two Presidents of the Royal Geographical Society of London. The late and the present, the living and the dead, physically and metaphysically also, are not these features, as the men, separated alike by the great gulf of the unknown, by a vast stretch of that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns?
The sun went down, and I returned to my youthful companion with the horses below. We were fifty-one miles from the water we had left. The horses were pictures of misery, old Buggs’s legs had swelled greatly from the contusions he had received in falling on the slippery rocks. The old black mare which I rode, though a sorry hack, looked worse than I had ever seen her before, and even the youthful and light-heeled and -hearted Diaway hung his head, and one could almost span him round the flanks. The miserable appearance of the animals was caused as much by want of food as want of water, for they have scarcely eaten a mouthful since we left the pass; indeed, all they had seen to eat was not inviting.
We slowly left these desolate ridges behind, and at fifteen miles we camped, Jimmy and I being both hungry and thirsty. Our small supply of water only tantalised, without satisfying us whenever we took a mouthful. We now found we had nothing to eat, at least nothing cooked, and we had to sacrifice a drop of our stock of water to make a Johnny-cake. It was late by the time we had eaten our supper, and I told Jimmy he had better go to sleep if he felt inclined; I then caught and tied up the horses, which had already rambled some distance away. When I got back I found Jimmy had literally taken me at my word; for there he was fast asleep among the coals and ashes of the fire, in which we had cooked our cake. I rolled him over once or twice to prevent him catching fire, but he did not awake. The night was very warm; I tried to lay down on my rug, but I was in such pain all over from my recent accident, that I could not remain still. I only waited to allow Jimmy a little sleep, or else he would have fallen off his horse, and caused more delay. I walked to, and tried to console, the horses. Sleepless and restless, I could no longer remain.
Fast asleep is Armor lying–do not touch him, do not wake him; but Armor had to be awakened. But first I saddled and put up everything on the horses. Jimmy’s lips were cracked and parched, and his tongue dry and half out of his mouth; I thought the kindest way to wake him was to pour a little water into his mouth. Up he jumped in a moment, and away we went at three o’clock in the morning, steering by the stars until daylight; slowly moving over sandhill after sandhill. Soon after sunrise we fell in with our outgoing track, and continued on, though we had great trouble to keep the horses going at all, until we reached our old encampment of the night before last, being now only fifteen miles from the water. For the last few miles the horses had gone so dreadfully slow, I thought they would give in altogether. So soon as they were unsaddled they all lay down, shivering and groaning fearfully.
To see a horse in a state of great thirst is terrible, the natural cavity opens to an extraordinary size, and the creature strains and makes the most lamentable noises. Mares are generally worse in these cases than horses. Old Buggs and the mare were nearly dead. Diaway suffered less than the others. We had yet a small quantity of water in our bag, and it was absolutely necessary to sacrifice it to the horses if we wished them ever to return. We had but three pints, which we gave to Buggs and the mare, Diaway getting none. What the others got was only just enough to moisten their tongues. Leaving this place at eleven a.m., we reached the gorge at sundown, travelling at the rate of only two miles an hour. The day was hot, 104 degrees at eleven a.m. When we took the saddles off the horses, they fell, as they could only stand when in motion–old Buggs fell again in going up the gorge; they all fell, they were so weak, and it took nearly an hour to get them up to the bath. They were too weak to prevent themselves from slipping in, swimming and drinking at the same time; at last old Buggs touched the bottom with his heels, and stood upon his hind-legs with his forefeet against the rock wall, and his head bent down between, and drank thus. I never saw a horse drink in that fashion before.
It was very late when we got them back to the camp-tree, where we let them go without hobbles. The ants were as rampant as ever, and I passed another night in walking up and down the glen. Towards midnight the horses came again for water, but would not return, preferring to remain till morning rather than risk a passage down in the dark.
I went right up to the top of the mountain, and got an hour’s peace before the sun rose. In the morning all the horses’ legs were puffed and swelled, and they were frightened to move from the water. I had great trouble in getting them down at all. It was impossible to ride them away, and here we had to remain for another day, in this Inferno. Not Dante’s, gelid lowest circle of Hell, or city of Dis, could cause more anguish, to a forced resident within its bounds, than did this frightful place to me. Even though Moses did omit to inflict ants on Pharaoh, it is a wonder Dante never thought to have a region of them full of wicked wretches, eternally tortured with their bites, and stings, and smells. Dante certainly was good at imagining horrors. But imagination can’t conceive the horror of a region swarming with ants and then Dante never lived in an ant country, and had no conception what torture such creatures can inflict. The smaller they are the more terrible. My only consolation here was my marble bath, which the horses had polluted; within its cool and shady depths I could alone find respite from my tormentors. Oh, how earnestly did I wish that its waters were the waters of oblivion, or that I could quaff some kind nepenthe, which would make me oblivious of my woes, for the persistent attacks of the ants unceasingly continued
“From night till morn, from morn till dewy eve.”
Here of course we had no dewy eve. Only one slight source of pleasure at length occurred to me, and that was, that Jimmy began to shift about a bit at last. On the 26th, with what delight I departed from this odious gorge after another night of restlessness, agony, and misery, may perhaps be imagined, though of course I was indebted to the glen for water, and unless we actually give up our lives, we cannot give up that. There was a good deal of water in this bath, as may be supposed when horses could swim about in it. I called it Edith’s Marble Bath, after my niece, having named Glen Edith also after her on my former expedition. The stone here is not actually marble, though very like it. I saw no limestone in this range; the only approach to it is in the limestone formation in the bed of the ancient Lake Christopher, mentioned as lying to the west of the Rawlinson Range. The stone here was a kind of milky quartz. We kept away as much as possible off the rough slopes of the range, and got to Glen Helen at night, but old Buggs knocked up, and we had to lead, beat, and drive him on foot, so that it was very late before we got to the glen. We got all three horses back to the pass early the next day. No natives had appeared, but the horses had never been seen since I left. Oh, didn’t I sleep that night! no ants. Oh, happiness! I hadn’t slept for a week.
The next day, the 28th of February, Gibson and Jimmy went to look for the mob of horses. There was a watering-place about two miles and a half south from here, where emus used to water, and where the horses did likewise; there they found all the horses. There was a very marked improvement in their appearance, they had thriven splendidly. There is fine green feed here, and it is a capital place for an explorer’s depot, it being such an agreeable and pretty spot. Gibson and Jimmy went to hunt for emus, but we had none for supper. We got a supply of pigeons for breakfast. Each day we more deeply lament that the end of our ammunition is at hand. For dinner we got some hawks, crows, and parrots. I don’t know which of these in particular disagreed with me, but I suppose the natural antipathy of these creatures to one another, when finding themselves somewhat crowded in my interior, was casus belli enough to set them quarrelling even after death and burial; all I knew was the belli was going on in such a peculiar manner that I had to abandon my dinner almost as soon as I had eaten it. It is now absolutely necessary to kill a horse for food, as our ammunition is all but gone. Mr. Tietkens and I went to find a spot to erect a smoke-house, which required a soft bank for a flue; we got a place half a mile away. Thermometer 104 degrees. Mr. Tietkens and I commenced operations at the smoke-house, and the first thing we did was to break the axe handle. Gibson, who thought he was a carpenter, blacksmith, and jack-of-all-trades by nature, without art, volunteered to make a new one, to which no one objected. The new handle lasted until the first sapling required was almost cut in two, when the new handle came in two also; so we had to return to the camp, while Gibson made another handle on a new principle. With this we worked while Gibson and Jimmy shod a couple of horses. A pair of poking brutes of horses are always away by themselves, and Mr. Tietkens and I went to look for, but could not find them. We took the shovel and filled up the emu water-hole with sand, so that the horses had to show themselves with the others at the pass at night. For two or three days we shod horses, shot pigeons, and worked at the smoke-house. I did not like the notion of killing any of the horses, and determined to make a trip eastwards, to see what the country in that direction was like. We chopped up some rifle bullets for shot, to enable Gibson and Jimmy to remain while we were away, as a retreat to Fort Mueller from here was a bitter idea to me. Before I can attempt to penetrate to the west, I must wait a change in the weather. The sky was again becoming cloudy, and I had hopes of rain at the approaching equinox.
The three horses we required for the trip we put down through the north side of the pass. On March 10th, getting our horses pretty easily, we started early. As soon as we got clear of the pass on the north side, almost immediately in front of us was another pass, lying nearly east, which we reached in five miles. I called this the Weld Pass. From hence we had a good view of the country farther east. A curved line of abrupt-faced hills traversed the northern horizon; they had a peculiar and wall-like appearance, and seemed to end at a singular-looking pinnacle thirty-four or five miles away, and lying nearly east. This abrupt-faced range swept round in a half circle, northwards, and thence to the pinnacle. We travelled along the slopes of the Rawlinson Range, thinking we might find some more good gorges before it ended, we being now nearly opposite the Alice Falls. One or two rough and stony gullies, in which there was no water, existed; the country was very rough. I found the Rawlinson Range ended in fifteen or sixteen miles, at the Mount Russell* mentioned before. Other ranges rose up to the east; the intervening country seemed pretty well filled with scrub. We pushed on for the pinnacle in the northern line, but could not reach it by night as we were delayed en route by searching in several places for water. The day was hot, close, cloudy, and sultry. In front of us now the country became very scrubby as we approached the pinnacle, and for about three miles it was almost impenetrable. We had to stop several times and chop away limbs and boughs to get through, when we emerged on the bank of a small gum creek, and, turning up its channel, soon saw some green rushes in the bed. A little further up we saw more, brighter and greener, and amongst them a fine little pond of water. Farther up, the rocks rose in walls, and underneath them we found a splendid basin of overflowing water, which filled several smaller ones below. We could hear the sound of splashing and rushing waters, but could not see from whence those sounds proceeded. This was such an excellent place that we decided to remain for the rest of the day. The natives were all round us, burning the country, and we could hear their cries. This morning we had ridden through two fresh fires, which they lit, probably, to prevent our progress; they followed us up to this water. I suppose they were annoyed at our finding such a remarkably well-hidden place. It is a very singular little glen. There are several small mounds of stones placed at even distances apart, and, though the ground was originally all stones, places like paths have been cleared between them. There was also a large, bare, flat rock in the centre of these strange heaps, which were not more than two and a half feet high. I concluded–it may be said uncharitably, but then I know some of the ways and customs of these people–that these are small kinds of teocallis, and that on the bare rock already mentioned the natives have performed, and will again perform, their horrid rites of human butchery, and that the drippings of the pellucid fountains from the rocky basins above have been echoed and re-echoed by the dripping fountains of human gore from the veins and arteries of their bound and helpless victims. Though the day was hot, the shade and the water were cool, and we could indulge in a most luxurious bath. The largest basin was not deep, but the water was running in and out of it, over the rocks, with considerable force. We searched about to discover by its sound from whence it came, and found on the left-hand side a crevice of white quartz-like stone, where the water came down from the upper rocks, and ran away partly into the basins and partly into rushes, under our feet. On the sloping face of the white rock, and where the water ran down, was a small indent or smooth chip exactly the size of a person’s mouth, so that we instinctively put our lips to it, and drank of the pure and gushing element. I firmly believe this chip out of the rock has been formed by successive generations of the native population, for ages placing their mouths to and drinking at this spot; but whether in connection with any sacrificial ceremonies or no, deponent knoweth, and sayeth not. The poet Spenser, more than three hundred years ago, must have visited this spot–at least, in imagination, for see how he describes it:–
“And fast beside there trickled softly down, A gentle stream, whose murmuring waves did play Amongst the broken stones, and made a sowne, To lull him fast asleep, who by it lay: The weary traveller wandering that way Therein might often quench his thirsty heat, And then by it, his weary limbs display; (Whiles creeping slumber made him to forget His former pain), and wash away his toilsome sweet.”
(ILLUSTRATION: GILL’S PINNACLE.)
There is very poor grazing ground round this water. It is only valuable as a wayside inn, or out. I called the singular feature which points out this water to the wanderer in these western wilds, Gill’s Pinnacle, after my brother-in-law, and the water, Gordon’s Springs, after his son. In the middle of the night, rumblings of thunder were heard, and lightnings illuminated the glen. When we were starting on the following morning, some aborigines made their appearance, and vented their delight at our appearance here by the emission of several howls, yells, gesticulations, and indecent actions, and, to hem us in with a circle of fire, to frighten us out, or roast us to death, they set fire to the triodia all round. We rode through the flames, and away.
CHAPTER 2.9. FROM 12TH MARCH TO 19TH APRIL, 1874.
The Rebecca.
The Petermann range.
Extraordinary place.
The Docker.
Livingstone’s Pass.
A park.
Wall-like hills.
The Ruined Rampart.
Pink, green, and blue water.
Park-like scenery.
The Hull.
A high cone.
Sugar-loaf Peak.
Pretty hills and grassy valleys.
Name several features.
A wild Parthenius.
Surprise a tribe of natives.
An attack.
Mount Olga in view.
Overtaken by the enemy.
Appearance of Mount Olga.
Breakfast interrupted.
Escape by flight.
The depot.
Small circles of stone.
Springs.
Mark a tree.
Slaughter Terrible Billy.
A smoke signal.
Trouble in collecting the horses.
A friendly conference.
Leave Sladen Water.
Fort McKellar.
Revisit the Circus.
The west end of the range.
Name two springs.
The country towards the other ranges eastwards appeared poor and scrubby. We went first to a hill a good deal south of east, and crossed the dry bed of a broad, sandy, and stony creek running north. I called it the Rebecca. From it we went to a low saddle between two hills, all the while having a continuous range to the north; this was the extension beyond the pinnacle of the wall-like crescent. A conspicuous mount in this northern line I called Mount Sargood*. From this saddle we saw a range of hills which ran up from the south-west, and, extending now eastwards, formed a valley nearly in front of us. I called this new feature the Petermann Range. In it, a peculiar notch existed, to which we went. This new range was exceedingly wall-like and very steep, having a serrated ridge all along; I found the notch to be only a rough gully, and not a pass. We continued along the range, and at four miles farther we came to a pass where two high hills stood apart, and allowed an extremely large creek–that is to say, an extremely wide one–whose trend was northerly, to come through. Climbing one of the hills, I saw that the creek came from the south-west, and was here joined by another from the south-east. There was an exceedingly fine and pretty piece of park-like scenery, enclosed almost entirely by hills, the Petermann Range forming a kind of huge outside wall, which enclosed a mass of lower hills to the south, from which these two creeks find their sources. This was a very extraordinary place; I searched in vain in the pass for water, and could not help wondering where such a watercourse could go to. The creek I called the Docker*. The pass and park just within it I called Livingstone Pass and Learmonth* Park. Just outside the pass, northerly, was a high hill I called Mount Skene*.
(ILLUSTRATION: VIEW ON THE PETERMANN RANGE.)
Finding no water in the pass, we went to the more easterly of the two creeks; it was very small compared with the Docker. It was now dusk, and we had to camp without water. The day was hot. This range is most singular in construction; it rises on either side almost perpendicularly, and does not appear to have very much water about it; the hills indeed seem to be mere walls, like the photographs of some of the circular ranges of mountains in the moon. There was very fine grass, and our horses stayed well. We had thunder and lightning, and the air became a little cooled. The creek we were on appeared to rise in some low hills to the south; though it meandered about so much, it was only by travelling, we found that it came from a peculiar ridge, upon whose top was a fanciful-looking, broken wall or rampart, with a little pinnacle on one side. When nearly abreast, south, of this pinnacle, we found some water in the creek-bed, which was now very stony. The water was impregnated with ammonia from the excreta of emus, dogs, birds, beasts, and fishes, but the horses drank it with avidity. Above this we got some sweet water in rocks and sand. I called the queer-looking wall the Ruined Rampart. There was a quantity of different kinds of water, some tasting of ammonia, some saltish, and some putrid. A few ducks flew up from these strange ponds. There was an overhanging ledge and cave, which gave us a good shade while we remained here, the morning being very hot. I called these MacBain’s* Springs.
Following the creek, we found in a few miles that it took its rise in a mass of broken table-lands to the south. We still had the high walls of the Petermann to the north, and very close to us. In five miles we left this water-shed, and descended the rough bed of another creek running eastwards; it also had some very queer water in it–there were pink, green, and blue holes. Ducks were also here; but as we had no gun, we could not get any. Some sweet water was procured by scratching in the sand. This creek traversed a fine piece of open grassy country–a very park-like piece of scenery; the creek joined another, which we reached in two or three miles. The new creek was of enormous width; it came from the low hills to the south and ran north, where the Petermann parted to admit of its passage. The natives were burning the country through the pass. Where on earth can it go? No doubt water exists in plenty at its head, and very likely where the natives are also; but there was none where we struck it. I called this the Hull*.
The main range now ran on in more disconnected portions than formerly; their general direction was 25 degrees south of east. We still had a mass of low hills to the south. We continued to travel under the lea of the main walls, and had to encamp without water, having travelled twenty-five miles from the Ruined Rampart. A high cone in the range I called Mount Curdie*. The next morning I ascended the eastern end of Mount Curdie. A long way off, over the tops of other hills, I could see a peak bearing 27 degrees south of east; this I supposed was, as it ought to be, the Sugar-loaf Hill, south westward from Mount Olga, and mentioned previously. To the north there was a long wall-like line stretching across the horizon, ending about north-east; this appeared to be a disconnected range, apparently of the same kind as this, and having gaps or passes to allow watercourses to run through; I called it Blood’s Range. I could trace the Hull for many miles, winding away a trifle west of north. It is evident that there must exist some gigantic basin into which the Rebecca, the Docker, and the Hull, and very likely several more further east, must flow. I feel morally sure that the Lake Amadeus of my former journey must be the receptacle into which these creeks descend, and if there are creeks running into the lake from the south, may there not also be others running in, from the north and west? The line of the southern hills, connected with the Petermann wall, runs across the bearing of the Sugar-loaf, so that I shall have to pass over or through them to reach it. The outer walls still run on in disconnected groups, in nearly the same direction as the southern hills, forming a kind of back wall all the way.
Starting away from our dry encampment, in seven miles we came to where the first hills of the southern mass approached our line of march. They were mostly disconnected, having small grassy valleys lying between them, and they were festooned with cypress pines, and some pretty shrubs, presenting also many huge bare rocks, and being very similar country to that described at Ayers Range, through which I passed in August. Here, however, the rocks were not so rounded and did not present so great a resemblance to turtles. At two miles we reached a small creek with gum timber, and obtained water by digging. The fluid was rather brackish, but our horses were very glad of it, and we gave them a couple of hours’ rest. I called this Louisa’s Creek. A hill nearly east of Mount Curdie I called Mount Fagan; another still eastward of that I called Mount Miller. At five miles from Louisa’s Creek we struck another and much larger one, running to the north; and upon our right hand, close to the spot at which we struck it, was a rocky gorge, through and over which the waters must tumble with a deafening roar in times of flood. Just now the water was not running, but a quantity was lodged among the sand under the huge boulders that fill up the channel. I called this the Chirnside*. A hill in the main range eastward of Mount Miller I called Mount Bowley. At ten miles from Louisa’s Creek we camped at another and larger watercourse than the Chirnside, which I called the Shaw*. All these watercourses ran up north, the small joining the larger ones–some independently, but all going to the north. Crossing two more creeks, we were now in the midst of a broken, pine-clad, hilly country, very well grassed and very